


ann gets a gun

by screwds



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ann-Centric, Attempt at Humor, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 14:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11187330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screwds/pseuds/screwds
Summary: The hilarious thing is, Akira gives her a tommy gun.





	ann gets a gun

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this based on the sole fact that Ann's guns has the worst accuracy of all the guns in-game and I can't figure out how to aim them. At all. 
> 
> As always, a bit of introspection and angst (and Carmen) crept in. Whoops.

 

The hilarious thing is, Akira gives her a tommy gun. 

Carmen comes bursting out in a madness of pink and black and she’s too busy kicking ass to pay attention to the particulars. Ann’s left standing after the battle, whip on one hip and a gun slung over her shoulder, and Ryuji and Akira are looking at her. Not  _ looking _ looking at her, except she looks down, and she’s wearing a red catsuit. With an inbuilt push-up bra. And a tail. So maybe they are  _ looking _ at her.

Ryuji does this thing with his face that means his brain got cannibalized by teenage hormones, and Akira’s just smirking. There’s a persistent ache in her lower back, and thank fuck this...outfit...didn’t come in higher heels, because her feet feel a little too wobbly for heel-y shenanigans. She’s  _ exhausted _ , and trying to take this whole situation in (this is anime, her brain keeps whispering, you’re in a magical girl anime), and if she doesn’t say something soon she’ll break down in hysterical giggles and they’ll all think she’s crazy.

Wait. Why does she even care what they think? They were the ones taken down by the guards! She’s starting to get a little angry, anger she thought she had excised when she sliced through Princess Ann and turned her--no, it--into ash. She’s feels like she’s overcaffeinated, shaky and awake-tired, and the heat of her anger crawls in waves under her skin.

Carmen’s intoxicating power lays resting right behind her eyes. It would be so easy, she thinks a little distantly, to just call her Persona and burn the entire world down, starting with Kamoshida and his stupid fucking castle. 

Except, she would also end up burning Ryuji and Akira and Shiho and they kinda don’t deserve it, and wow, that weird bobble-headed cat thing is also staring at her. Was it doing that this entire time? Holy crap. It’s getting a little uncomfortable.

So she rounds on Akira, who’s still smirking, and says, “Well, what’s so funny, huh? What’re you staring at?!” because he’s starting to piss her off ever so slightly. 

She doesn’t even know him all that well, but he’s acting all cocky and he listened to her about Shiho and she doesn’t think he’s a bad guy. He got her through the battle alive. She doesn’t think he’s pretending to sympathize with her. Other guys have tried that in the past, and she could always feel the sleaze of their gaze concentrate somewhere around her boobs, her butt, her legs. Akira’s gaze settled somewhere around the top of her left shoulder, but maybe he’s into some weirdly kinky stuff, and she was taught from a young age to be on guard because self-sufficiency was the only answer to absent parents. 

She doesn’t expect Akira to say, “Nice. A submachine gun. You’re like some kinda mafia enforcer.”

“W-what?!” she says. 

“I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse,” he says in an obnoxiously terrible gangster voice. 

“C’mon, man, what are you, my gramps?” Ryuji says. 

“A classic’s a classic,” Akira says, and shrugs. 

“Dude, we’re Japanese! Have some national pride! Go with the yakuza or something!” 

“The TV at Leblanc plays movie reruns sometimes,” Akira says. 

Ryuji rubs at the edge of one cheek, bruised from the number of times he slammed on his face from an All-Out Attack. “We gotta get you outta there more often. You’re makin’ me sad with how much you’re cooped up.”

Akira just raises an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re on probation and a scary delinquent and you’ve done everything illegal under the sun.” 

They’re...very relaxed. Carmen coos at her about being the scariest thing around and how  _ easy _ that would be if she just set fire to something. Ann wants to remind them they’re in the middle of hostile territory where she had just been tied up. They’re just standing around chatting like old ladies at the market. Some of the tension bleeds out of her shoulders. Is this normal behavior for them? Are they doing this on purpose?

Akira cocks his hand like his pistol and points it where Kamoshida stood. “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” he says in his mob voice and blows imaginary smoke off the tip of his fingers.

“That’d be too good for that asshole,” Ryuji mutters. He still sounds way too loud. “Gotta smack his Royalness down with a royal ass-kicking.” He cracks his knuckles. 

The cat thing says, “We’re not here to fight him unless necessary! We’re here to secure an infiltration route and steal the Treasure, remember?” 

“O-of course I remember! I’m just sayin’ that we’re gonna kick his ass!”

The cat thing sighs, exasperated. “This is the most basic of basics of phantom thievery! We’re here to  _ steal _ , not  _ fight _ . What kind of a phantom thief would we be if we got caught stealing?”

“Dude, I don’t know!” Ryuji scrubs a hand through his hair. “A badass one?”

Ann does not say,  _ What the everloving  _ hell _ are you guys talking about?!   _ She does not scream. She says, very very evenly, “Why are we still standing around?” because she hears the tell-tale  _ clang _ of metal boots on cobblestones and they’re standing in the middle of an exposed room.

The cat thing startles all over. “Lady Ann’s right!” it says in alarm. “We gotta get outta here!”

\---

Three minutes of running, a safe room, and some dungeon hand-wavy magic that leaves her trying not to dry-heave, they’re standing by the entrance of the castle. (Magical girl anime, her brain continues to whisper hysterically). The adrenaline ebbs out of her veins in fizzes and spurts. They’re, for all intents and purposes, safe for the moment. She braces her hands on her knees and tries to catch her breath. 

Akira’s looking at her again. She snaps, “What?!” Purposefully does not regret it. 

“Submachine guns, huh,” he murmurs. He pulls out a small notebook from inside his vest and starts scrawling. His one-track focus is starting to rankle her. Carmen rustles her skirts invitingly.

Ryuji saves Akira from being accidentally barbequed. “Man, why’d you have to get the big gun? It can hit multiple Shadows at once, can’t it?” 

“Mm-hm.”

“Damn. I wanted the big gun.” He fingers his shotgun absentmindedly.

She says sweetly, “Sounds like someone’s trying to overcompensate.”

“I got nothing to overcompensate for!” Ryuji says in a rush, voice squeaky high, waving his hands frantically. “I’m perfectly normal and average thankyouverymuch!” His eyes flick down. He changes the subject. “Nice tail you got there! Izzat a new fetish or something for you? I mean catgirls are pretty hot and all. And. Ahaha.” His face floods with even more red and he snaps his mouth shut.

Ann balls up her fists and chants inside her head,  _ I will not strangle Ryuji. I will not set him on fire. I will not kick him in the balls, where he probably keeps his brains, oh god why did I just think that.  _

Ann then tells Carmen to settle down and cool it with the hair-trigger temper. 

She’s got a pretty good grip on who she tends to be. She’s headstrong and impulsive, not a pyromaniac. Strangling Ryuji is usually a thought that crosses her mind once a conversation. Setting him--and everyone else--on fire is completely new. Carmen pouts at her.

Akira snaps his notebook shut. “Alright, let’s head back to the real world. Ann, I need your measurements so I can get you some better armor.” 

“Dude, you can’t just straight out ask a girl her sizes! That’s rude!” 

“I don’t mind,” Ann says, and tries for a smile. She feels a little calmer. That might just be the exhaustion speaking, but it’s a relief that she doesn’t feel the urge to set anyone or anything on fire anymore. Thanks, Carmen. “They print it in my magazine shoots anyways.”

“Lady Ann…” the cat thing says dreamily. 

“Yo, got a bit o’ advice. Mona really likes the color red. You better watch out--Mona goes after it like catnip,” Ryuji says. He’s smirking.

“H-hey!!” Mona yelps.

Ann says, “For real?!” and accidentally rolls her r’s. Like a gangster. 

Ryuji snickers. After a moment, Akira follows.

Her gun suddenly feels like a very enticing and cathartic way to wipe off two sets of identical shit-eating grins. 

\---

When they return to the Palace, Akira hands her a tommy gun in a violin case with a crooked grin. He tells her, “I’m not judging.” Pause. “Miss Mafia.”

Liar. She sticks out her tongue at him and he waltzes away, laughing.

Ann knows how to shoot a gun. Hammer, sight, trigger. Lock, stock, barrel. Her dad had taken her to a gun range when they lived in Helsinki and handed her a hunting rifle. She remembers--he used to be in the Finnish Defense Forces. National mandatory conscription. “Basic was hell,” he’d said with a smile in his voice, “but basic trainin’ s’always hell. The only things I shoot nowadays are fashion models with my camera.”

Honestly, she misses him the most out of her parents. Her parents may be famous fashion editors and all, but they doesn’t visit her or Japan much anymore. She knows her dad’s always on guard in Japan, where he takes up too much space and speaks accented Japanese and is always hitting his head on doors. He’s tall and foreign and sticks out like a sore thumb. (So is she, but she’s kinda stuck here, and she has Shiho and  doesn’t care).

Ann likes the rifle. It’s precise and and thumps comfortingly into her shoulder with every shot. She’d managed to hit the target at the gun range with every shot, and dotted her way to a perfect bullseye. Her dad had picked her like she was four again and spun her around, crowing “Ah, my little angel , you did amazing!” and she had giggled. 

Tommy guns are artillery, through and through. She pulls it out of the violin case with a rueful grin. They’re automatics and have bigger mags than the others’ guns and spray bullets like water. Her guns dance like the fire she throws with Carmen--quicksilver and flirty and like a cheeky blown kiss. Get too close, Carmen giggles, and get burned.

They’re not exactly the most accurate guns. Ann can barely manage to lay down an even cover of fire upon a group of hapless Shadows. A couple of those things are definitely dead by the time she manages to wrestle the gun to the other targets. Her tommy gun pulls to the left after a couple rounds and jerks unpredictably with every once in awhile. It’s depressingly realistic for a model gun.

Carmen just laughs at her when she complains. 

It’s nothing like the rifles she’s used to. She’d almost trade guns with Ryuji, except his shotguns have a hell of a kick on them and nearly dislocate his shoulder with each shot. He says he’s used to it, but she sees him rub his shoulder with a wince after every battle he uses his gun. He puffs up, trying to be manly, and immediately flinches and deflates when she pokes him in the collarbone.  

Akira blinks at her innocently when she bitches him out for her guns’ low accuracy. “I’ve been getting you ones with good stats,” he informs her with the air of a man who knows jack shit about guns except for trashy mob movies. 

“They suck,” she tells him. “Get me one that stops pulling to the left and I’ll outshoot Mona.” 

(He gets her a Flare SMG, which may be even worse, because it pulls to the right and likes to drop and she still can’t aim for shit).

**Author's Note:**

> The movie Akira is quoting from is The Godfather (1972). For teens in the year 20XX, it's probably super dated, but man, those lines are classics. Both quotes are spoken by Don Vito Corleone. Akira's the exact kind of snarky dork who would do terrible accents and not get things thrown at him.
> 
> Ann's tommy gun stats: ATK 82 ACC 82  
> Ann's Flare SMG stats: ATK 124 ACC 78 
> 
> I ended up with a headcanon that Ann's dad is half-Finnish half-American and looks like lumberjack Thor. Ann's gotta get the recessive blonde-haired blue-eyed genes from somewhere. Ann's mom was a Japanese supermodel, is now a fashion editor. Both of them globe-trot in glorious fashionable clothing while Ann's being a Phantom Thief in Tokyo.


End file.
